Pulsed star labeling of arterial regions (PULSAR): A robust regional perfusion technique for high field imaging

Regional perfusion imaging (RPI) has recently been introduced as a potentially powerful technique to map the perfusion territories of patients with vascular diseases in a fully noninvasive manner. However, this technique suffers from the problems of the transfer insensitive labeling technique upon which it is based. In particular, RPI is very sensitive to magnetic field inhomogeneities, and therefore the definition of the labeled bolus can deteriorate at field strength higher than 1.5 T. Furthermore, the slab-selective triple-pulse postsaturation sequence used originally will also be impaired due to the same problem, rendering FIR unusable at higher field. In this work, an adiabatic-based signal targeting with alternating radiofrequency pulses sequence is proposed as a labeling scheme to solve the problems related to variations in local magnetic field, together with an improved four-pulse water suppression enhanced through T-1 effects technique as a presaturation scheme. (C) 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.